For my first Atari 8-bit project in many years, and my first assembly project ever, I have decided to remake a ZX spectrum classic, Hungry Horace.

Hungry Horace was originally written by William Tang for Beam Software/Melbourne House in 1982. It was quickly followed by two sequels and Horace himself became a kind of mascot for the Spectrum in the early years.The game is a Pac-Man inspired game, but as the title character, it is your goal to eat the flowers in the park, whilst avoiding the grumpy park wardens. Fortunately, you can make the wardens panic for a short time by ringing a bell. This then allows you to kick them out of the park temporarily.More information about Hungry Horace can be found on the World of Spectrum site.Why am I remaking a game? And why this game?

Well, I decided to do a remake first so that I didn’t have to come up with the game ideas, layout, etc. Also the graphics were already designed, so it would be a simple case of converting them to the Atari resolutions. This freed me up to concentrate on the actual coding of the game. Rather than disassembling the original and then converting the code from Z80 assembler to 6502, I am writing this from scratch, trying my best to get the game mechanics to work in a similar fashion to the original.As to why this game. That is simply because it is a fairly simple game: It fit into a 16K Spectrum, it only has four levels, limited graphics and hardly any sound in the original. Plus, it is a game I played way back in the early eighties and I am very familiar with it.My plans for the remake are to make it more colourful and hopefully have some decent sounds and music. It’s not an overly ambitious project, and I’m hoping it doesn’t take too long to complete.If things work out as well as I am hoping, I may also create Atari versions of the two official sequels: Horace Goes Skiing and Horace And The Spiders.